Things to Know Before Undergoing the Cataract Surgery

Things to Know Before Undergoing the Cataract Surgery

The cataract is actually the health condition that affects the lens of your eye. The lens is the part of the eye that is found right underneath the colored part of the eye and it gathers the light rays, directing them to the retina, in this way enabling the eye to see correctly. However, when the cataract starts, your eye lens starts to alter and it becomes clouded. Its color changes and it gets yellow color that prevents the light to touch the retina in a focused way. Once this starts, it is not going back and it can even progress further until the lens is completely clouded. This means that it doesn’t let the light into the eye which means that the person is blind.

What Causes the Cataract?

It is hard to say what will cause the cataract to happen. The most common cause and reason for the cataract development is the old age. The structure of the lens changes and the cataract develops. However, the same can be caused by some sort of injury. Also, besides the injury, the eye surgery can be a factor of risk. Other medical problems and issues such are genetic disorders, diabetes and high blood pressure. All these can in some way alter the structure of the lens and make it less transparent.

Could This Be Prevented?

It is highly unlikely to prevent the cataract from developing. There have been some studies that tried to observe the influence of vitamin E and selenium to the cataract development, but they showed that the influence is insignificant. The best you can do is to prevent the disorders and medical conditions that can cause the cataract and lead healthier lifestyle so that your body has great general health. This means ceasing smoking and leading

healthy lifestyle to prevent high blood pressure and diabetes. Also, it means taking good care of your eyes and preventing any type of injury at all costs.

What Does the Surgery Look Like?

The surgery today is a very routine and very effective procedure. With the use of laser, this type of surgery is pretty common and very effective. What happens during the surgery is that it is done in local anesthesia. Once the anesthetics are given to the patient, a small incision is made in cornea. Through this incision, the lens is vacuumed out. If it is to be replaced entirely by the artificial lens, then sometimes, the lens is broken into pieces by the ultrasound device and sucked out. When the lens is removed it is replaced by the artificial one. This lens can be acrylic, silicone or plastic. Once it is installed, you don’t need glasses and it doesn’t require any special care on your part. While there are risks to this surgery, the success rate is almost 99%.

What is the Recovery Period?

During the first couple of days, you need to be very careful about the eyes and the post op procedure. The pain that is felt should be managed with pain relief medications. Also, it is important that you use eye drops that your doctor has prescribed because they are liquid form antibiotics that prevent any sort of infection that could happen to the eye. After that, a couple of weeks is needed for the eye to heal and for the incision to heal completely. The vision can still be blurry and not that clear because of the time needed for the eye to get used to its renewed function. The vision may take as long as several months to be completely restored to normal.

It is important that you are ready for the cataracts treatment in form of the surgery because that is the only way to heal this type of health issue. The good sides of this treatment are the fact that the vision is completely restored, the cataract is permanently removed and in most cases the vision is fixed in a way that you probably don’t even need the glasses anymore. Another great side is the success rate of this surgery which is very high. It is all about determining to get healthy as medicine is here to help you with that.

The post Things to Know Before Undergoing the Cataract Surgery appeared first on One Pound Less.